Shut Out(40)

No hands.

Not even Kelsey’s.

“Excellent. And all those in favor of continuing as planned with Lissa at the lead?”

All around the room, hands shot up.

“Seriously?” I asked, surprised.

“It actually might be better,” Ellen said. “You know, for you to be in charge without a boyfriend and all. It gives you a clearer perception, maybe. You aren’t biased by the pressure anyone is putting on you anymore.”

“Well, except me,” Chloe said, leaning against me and running a teasing hand up my thigh. “Can you resist me, Lissa? I don’t think you can.”

I bumped her hand off my leg, laughing. I was overcome with emotion, so awed by the girls’ support, that I forgot to be on edge. Even with twenty-one girls piled into my room, I found myself suddenly relaxing, trusting all of them more than I’d ever expected to.

“Wow, Chloe is getting desperate.” Mary giggled.

“No shit,” Susan said. “But we all knew she’d be dying inside without some booty.”

Chloe clutched a hand to her chest, made a few gagging noises, and then fell back onto the carpet, playing dead.

“So how about it, Lissa?” Ellen said, calling back my attention. “You still with us?”

“Yes,” I said, beaming. “I’m still with you. The strike continues.”

“Awesome,” Chloe said, using my shoulder to pull herself back into a sitting position, apparently no longer dead. “Now, where the f*ck is my ice cream?”


“Can I tell you something?”

I was standing at the kitchen sink, washing a few of the bowls that had been used for ice cream, unable to stand the idea of letting them sit around for more than a few minutes. I could still hear the chaos upstairs, where the others waited. I was just trying to figure out the sleeping arrangements—there was no way they were all staying in my bedroom—when I heard Kelsey’s voice behind me.

I glanced over my shoulder and found her standing in the doorway to the kitchen, looking way more nervous than I’d ever seen her look before.

“Sure,” I said. “What’s up?”

“The thing is, I…” She stopped and turned to look into the living room.

“My dad isn’t here,” I said, knowing instantly what she was doing. “My brother decided at the last minute that he wanted to drive to the lake and go fishing in the morning, and Dad wanted to go with him. It’s just us here. Which is a good thing, you know? It opens up some rooms for everyone to sleep in…. Sorry. What were you going to tell me?”

Kelsey stepped into the kitchen, easing up to the counter, her keen eyes watching as I put away the clean bowls. “Okay,” she said, “this is going to sound weird, but… I don’t like sex.”

I dried my hands on the dish towel and turned to face her, confused. “You… What?”

“Don’t tell anyone,” she insisted. “Please. It’s embarrassing. But I really don’t enjoy it. It’s just kind of… underwhelming. I only do it because it makes Terry happy, and I love him, but… I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. It’s just, you felt like you had to lie about being a virgin and I feel like I have to lie about this, and… I’m so weird.”

I remembered standing in Susan’s kitchen with Mary and how she’d asked if she was weird for being a virgin. I’d almost told her the truth about me that night. That she wasn’t weird, because I was a virgin, too. Or, rather, that we were weird together. This moment with Kelsey felt like intense déjà vu. Only this time, I couldn’t relate quite as much. Still, I said the same thing.

“You’re not weird.”

“How would you know?”

“I guess I don’t,” I admitted. “I don’t know if I’ll like it or not once I do it. If I ever do it. Because I may not.” I shrugged. “But why does not liking it have to make you weird?”

“Because everyone else seems to like it so much.”

“Maybe some of them are just pretending,” I said. “So no one thinks they’re weird.”

“Maybe,” Kelsey murmured. “God, why am I even telling you this? It’s so weird.”

“Stop saying it’s weird.”

Kelsey shook her head, laughing slightly. “Don’t repeat this,” she said, “but that’s part of the reason I hate Chloe. I’m jealous. She obviously enjoys it. I wish I liked it that much.”

“Well, Chloe gets hell for liking it too much. From you and others.”

“So she’s the weird one for liking it,” Kelsey suggested.

“Or it could be that no one is weird,” I offered. “I mean, Mary and I thought we were weird because we hadn’t done it at all.”

“Maybe we’re all weird, then,” Kelsey said.

“If that’s the case, then why does it matter?”

“Because I want to know what’s normal.” She hesitated and then looked down at her bare feet on the tile. “I want to be normal, but no one talks about sex, so how should I know what normal is?”

I considered this for a second. She was asking the same questions that had been running through my head for weeks: What’s normal? What is expected of us?